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A study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting showed that many specialists are not following the recommended guidelines for treating young children with ADHD. The researchers said it is not clear whether this is because some of the recommended treatments may not be available to all parents or whether there are other reasons.

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CDC researchers advised that pediatricians and health care providers should prescribe behavior therapy or other psychological services, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, instead of drugs as first-line treatment for young children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. However, a report found only about 50% of youths had such services, compared with 75% who received drugs.

Taiwanese researchers found a 1.65 times increased risk of an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis and 1.73 higher odds of being put on medication among preschool and school-age children born in August, compared with those born in September. The findings were not seen in teenagers. The study in The Journal of Pediatrics was based on health insurance data involving about 380,000 Taiwanese schoolchildren, ages 4 to 17. Researchers said the results may be because of age differences among schoolchildren in the same grade.

Through the use of magnetic field correlation imaging, U.S. researchers found lower iron concentrations in the brains of 12 children and teens with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder who were not treated with psychostimulants compared with children without the disorder and those receiving ADHD drugs. The iron levels of medication-naive ADHD patients seemed to normalize following treatment with stimulant drugs. The findings were presented at the Radiological Society of North America meeting.

U.S. researchers surveyed 560 specialists and found about 9 in 10 of them did not strictly follow the American Academy of Pediatrics' guidelines for treating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in preschoolers. The recommendations call for trying behavioral therapy first, but 70% of respondents recommended both medication and behavioral modification treatment together, while 21% prescribed drugs first.

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder appear to have similar symptoms and subtypes whether or not they were also diagnosed with mild intellectual disability, according to a U.K. study in the Journal of Pediatrics.